2012-10-09
Explanation
This comic plays on the concept of Zeno's paradox, a famous philosophical puzzle from ancient Greece. A man asks a woman if she is familiar with Zeno's paradox, and she says no. She then explains that she tried reading about it, but before she could get to the end, she had to get halfway to the end first. Then she had to read half the remaining portion, then half of that, and so on -- wondering how she could ever finish reading if there are infinite points to reach first. She has unwittingly demonstrated the paradox while claiming not to know it, since Zeno's paradox is precisely about the impossibility of completing a journey that requires passing through infinitely many intermediate points.
The man then asks if she is familiar with Plato's metaphor of the cave, and she replies "Only the dim outlines." This is a second layer of irony: in Plato's Allegory of the Cave, prisoners chained inside a cave can only see dim outlines (shadows) of reality projected on the wall. By saying she knows it only in "dim outlines," she is again perfectly embodying the very concept she claims to barely understand, seeing only the shadow of the idea rather than the idea itself.
The votey panel shows a bust of Plato saying "Heyoooo!" -- as if Plato himself is reacting with amusement to the woman's perfectly ironic demonstration of his own allegory. It serves as a comedic punchline acknowledging how neatly the joke landed.